Dr. Bert DeJong, Pastor Emeritus
Dr. Bert DeJong, Pastor Emeritus
Bert DeJong 0:03
So Celia and I spend about every other weekend in Michigan, and we're here then on the alternate weekends; it's always good to come back and to spend time with you, as well as it's good sometimes to be away and spend time with the rest of the family. But it's like coming home. And we're here. And we're just grateful for that and thankful for the opportunity to spend time with you this morning, continuing a series of messages on a theme we've been talking about for the entire month, the theme of idolatry. And I want to introduce you to someone who I think knew a good deal about idolatry.
Bert DeJong 0:42
Gutzon Borglum was inspired. The famed American sculptor of a century ago was moved to create something noble, something majestic, something that would stir the American spirit. He was going to sculpt faces worthy of the American character. He had no small dreams. He needed a stone larger than the largest block of granite ever quarried. So he set out for the wild west, looking for a mountain he could carve, larger than any others had looked before. He wrote about the place he was looking for. Here's what he had to say. He said, Let us place there carved high as close to heaven as we can their faces. Then breathe a prayer that these records will endure until the wind and the rain alone shall wear them away. So Borglum sets out for the West, he crosses into South Dakota, he comes to the Badlands, where the prairie becomes the Wild West, and he found the granite he was looking for a 5,275-foot mountain of granite. The exposed southern face provided the exact surface he needed for his work. So hanging from ropes and guiding a team with him. He blasted with dynamite, and then he chiseled with air hammers, and then he smoothed rock with his own hands. Finally, six and a half years later, his great work was done. Carved high, close to heaven, were four faces that reflect the American character, and you know them as the faces on Mount Rushmore, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt. What a glorious dream. What an inspiration to look high and carve something close to heaven worthy of the American character. Now, use your imagination for just a moment and change the scene. Just a bit with me; imagine that it is the day of dedication. We are standing at the foot of Mount Rushmore, and we are looking up, and behind huge canvases suspended by ropes are the faces that Borglum has carved. And now imagine that the National Anthem has been sung, that the dignitaries have all had their speeches, the Secretary of the Interior, the governor of the state of South Dakota, they've all had their say, and the great moment for unveiling has come and Borglum with a flourish. yanks on the rope, that canvas falls, and there is absolute silence. And imagine set suddenly, somewhere, somebody begins to laugh and imagine it soon. The laughter mixed with gasps spreads through the entire audience gathered at the foot of the mountain because looking up, they see four faces of Gutzon Borglum. preposterous to think that someone would carve their own face on a mountain, that the thought of looking up to see something worthy and something noble of our own character, that that would be a picture of the sculptor himself. Ridiculous.
Bert DeJong 4:38
I wonder if that's what the children of Israel were thinking. When the Prophet Isaiah described a somewhat similar scene in the 44th chapter. When I say he is going to talk to his people, God's people, about idolatry when in that church After the Prophet begins with an ominous note to listen to these words from verse six in Isaiah 44 "This is what the Lord says, Israel's King and Redeemer, the Lord Almighty. I am the first, and I am the last. And apart from me, there is no God Who then is like me. Let him proclaim it. You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me? No, there is no other rock above that." I can imagine Borglum listening to these words. No other rock. God says no, there's no other rock. Only God right? No other rock. I know not one. If you're going to carve the face of something noble and mighty, the greatest face ever known by any man in a mountain, you want to carve the face of the only God who belongs there, the God who made us, the God who redeems his people, the God whose we are, it's the only face that should be high and close to heaven. Now, Isaiah, having heard those words from God, the rock saying no, God's beside me. Isaiah tells a story about a carpenter. I love this story. A carpenter who's working on a project like Borglum going to carve a face carpenter has his own project. Listen to the story in chapter 44. Again, here's how he tells it. He says the carpenter measures with a line and outlines with a marker. He roughs it out with chisels, he marks it with compasses, he shapes it, in the form of man, in all his glory, that it may dwell in a shrine. He cut down cedars or perhaps took a cypress or, okay let it grow among the trees of the forest. He planted a pine, and rain made it grow. It's man's fuel for burning some of it; he takes and warms himself. He kindles a fire and bakes bread, but he also fashions God and worship said, he makes an idol and bows down to it. Half of the wood, he burns in the fire over it, he prepares his meal, he roasts his meat eats his feel. And he also warms himself and says, Ah, I'm warm; I see the fire. And from the rest, he makes a God, his idol. He bows down to it and worship it. He prays to it and says, save me. You are my God. Wait at this point. I think the children, because I got baby smiling, maybe they're elbowing each other and few of them might be laughing. I mean, really, the story of a carpet it goes into the woods cut, cuts down a tree builds fire cooks is being able to cut a little wood leftover. So he begins to carve something to worship, and it is his God. And he says to the same thing that warmed the food that he ate from that wormed his body. He says You're my God, you saved me. Guess what that God looks like? When I say, it tells us it's in the shape of a man. Isaiah then, having heard the man say, saved me, you are my God. He then says I love this. No one stops to think that's a problem with idolatry, you know, no one stops to think. No one has the knowledge or understanding to say, half of it is used for fuel. I even baked bread over its coals. I roasted meat, and I hate it. Shall I make a detestable thing from what's left? Shall I bow down to a block of wood? He feeds on ashes a deluded heart misleads him; he cannot save himself or say, Is not this thing in my right hand, a lie. Can't bring himself to admit that he has given his life to something fundamentally false. I'd say I told the story because he saw God's people selling themselves to a culture of idols to a land and a people who didn't know God worshipped Him as God, but who carved its Gods from blocks of wood or sculpted them from blocks of stone. And he forces God's people to witness the absurdity of using these raw materials for our own good and then decide that these things that we have made for our own good are exactly the things that we are going to worship.
Bert DeJong 9:38
It's ridiculous, says Isaiah to God's people 2500 years ago, and in his mind is rumbling this word from Sinai. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt out of bondage. What's number one on God's top 10 list? You shall have no other gods besides me. If you shall not make for yourself and idle in the image of anything goes on to say, right, no idols. And yet, they made them, and they worship them. And we read the story, and somehow it grips us as well. Because the truth of the matter of fact is that we are no less absurd at times in our image of God and the God we worship than God's people all those years ago. So what are our idols look like? If there's an edge to enjoying a story about the guy who makes an idol and worships it, it is because you realize that I may have some of that in my own nature, that I might have an impulse at times to stand in front of a black of granite and make something I think that it's wonderful and that something looks a lot like me. Or maybe like you, I'm guessing that the images that we have of God look far more like us than they do of God Himself. And you're beginning to get the point, right? At the root of the sin of idolatry is selfishness. It's self-worship; it's narcissism. It's the sin that encourages us to say, I can believe what I want to believe, I can think what I want to think, I can do what I want to do, and it's okay because, after all, it is all about me. I mean, who else is there about? Who else could it be about? In a commencement speech at Franciscan University, and take note of this, just, you know, file it somewhere, mentally put it on your cell phone or whatever you have to do. Check out Peter Kreeft's address craft as a Catholic theologian, and this past June, he gave a 19-minute speech commencement speech that is brilliant. I mean, it is worth 19 minutes of your life. He called it 10 Lies of Contemporary Culture. And Peter Kreeft says one of these lies he calls the most seductively satanic sentence he had ever heard that saying something from a theologian right there most seductively satanic sentence he'd ever heard. And he said I learned it in the 1970s from my children's television program, the electric company. And here it goes, you're ready for it? The most important person in the whole wide world is you. The most important person in the whole wide world is you. You wonder why we're, you know, we have some of the props we have in our world. And when we had a generation who had been raised to believe that we are the most important people in the world, I mean, that it's about me. Really, would we want to teach her children that do we want to believe that folks? This is an echo from the Garden of Eden when the devil whispered in the eaves ear, hey, you know, you can be like, God, I mean, you could be God really didn't do it, go ahead. Because nobody is more important than you are, you want to beat God. There are just a couple of things I hope you can walk away with this morning. And one is for words that you need to say to the people around you. I mean, we're going to get you to say that to the people next to this warning. I just invite you to turn to each other and say, you know, you're gonna have to say, you know, to say it's not about you. Go ahead and say to each other. It's not about you; we need to remind each other that it is really isn't about you. Now, I get a little righteous when I say something like that because we're feeling pretty good about myself when I look at you and say, you know, it's not about you. Because the temptation is to say it's not about you because it's about me.
Bert DeJong 14:41
It's about me, it's about your face on Mount Rushmore. It's mine. And while you're a little embarrassed by saying to the person next year, you know, it's not about you. You may even find it more difficult to have to say to yourself, it's not about me. There are some moments in life when God has tried to just give you a whack upside the head and say, it's not about me. In 1970, I was a newly ordained preacher in Gary, Indiana, and birch street just off the Borman expressway about 40 miles from here. It was a Sunday night, and I was waxing eloquent on something from the Heidelberg Catechism that probably wasn't eloquent, and I went, maybe it wasn't even waxing, but I was preaching about something. I don't know what. And there were maybe 30 people in the congregation, which is a really good crowd for Sunday night at beacon light in those days. Be a pretty good crowd here on a Sunday night. But anyway, I was preaching about something. And I remember this as it happened a minute ago. Suddenly, there was this absolutely amazing, incredible, frightening, frightening, I mean, it shook me to the core of my being, realization that people were looking at them and listening to me and believing what I was saying. And in that moment, it's like God said to a 25-year-old preacher, just starting, it's not about you. I will not forget that. And there have been times in my ministry God has had to remind me of that. It isn't about me. It isn't about me. And maybe you need to be able to say that about yourself. In fact, you said to each other, it's not about you, but you're willing to say it with me. It's not about me. You not about me. Well, who's it about? It's not about you and me. It is about God. The children of Israel were tempted by a culture surrounding them, asking them to carve gods that they could make in their own image. To them. God says these words. later in the chapter, he writes says, remember these things. So Jacob, for you are my servant of Israel, I have made you, you are my servant Israel, I will not forget you. I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins, like the morning mist returned to me, for I have redeemed you. Why isn't it about you? And why isn't it about me because God has made us? I'd say it brings us back to the opening of human history, the second chapter in the book of Ennis Genesis, and he says, Do you remember that it's God who knelt on the earth and took a handful of dirt and fashioned it into a human being, and breathed into the breath of life, and there Before him stood in human form, one created in the image of God, and now you think that you created from the dirt of the earth, in the image of the Almighty should make the Almighty in an image of stone or wood? What are you thinking? Remember why I created you said, God, I created you to serve me. You are my servant, is you've got it all wrong. I mean, the culture they were in got it all wrong. God created us to serve Him, we create gods because we want to serve them, whatever gods they might be. We say save me to the gods that we have made. It's entirely wrong. I'd say it says further to the people that God has made, that they might serve Him. He says God will not forget you. He will not forget you. And that promise has been made to a people who are committed to forgetting God. The assurance of the great promises is promised in forgiveness. A promise made by God that sweeps away the sins of His people invites them back into his presence so that they can make so that they can worship him and know him and serve him only. Israel had his problems with that. And so, of course, do we answer of course, do I
Bert DeJong 19:32
do you or I remember who made me? I no more willed myself into being than Did anyone else; we all bear the stamp of singular origin. We all came from the same God, who we are to acknowledge as the author of life, who is to be worshipped as God alone. Who else could we worship other than the one who has made us there is a sanctity of human life. Life, every human life made in the image of God. Do we remember why we walked this earth? God says I put you here to serve me. It is a singular purpose. It's not so that everybody could serve me or that I could serve myself, but rather all of us could serve him. Is there any more noble purpose than to go to work every morning? I don't care where you work or what you do, somehow carrying with you the belief that I am here to serve Almighty God; it's in my home. It's in a classroom, it's on a factory floor. It's an office building. I am here to serve Almighty God; that is my purpose. God help me figure out how I can best do that today. I don't want to serve anyone other than fundamentally serving you, and in Your name, to serve others so that they too can turn and serve you. A singular purpose. I will serve God with a singular promise, God says I won't forget you. Forget your idols. Don't forget God, he has not forgotten us. You know, those words came to life. Centuries later, when a carpenter's name of Jesus took a block of wood and put it on his shoulder and carried it to a hill and planted it in the earth and was nailed to that tree for the sins of people like you and me. He is our God. No other God besides you, no other God so that we could know Him, love Him, serve Him. Now, if you're in that relationship with God, and if, if like me, you're willing to say to the people around, you know, it really isn't about you. And if you have the courage to say it yourself, it's not about me. And we agreed together, it is about God, then there is a glorious promise that this chapter ends within Isaiah 44:23. We're going to use the words "Burst into song you mountains, you forests and all your trees." Isn't that interesting? All your trees. For the Lord has redeemed Jacob, he displays His glory in Israel. I say it says, you know, you people, you take trees into the kind of down, and then you build fires, and you cook your meal. And then you take what's left over. And you make a God that looks just like us. It says it No, no, you got it all wrong. Look at that tree. Listen to that tree, as it says the glory of Almighty God. Every Christmas season at The Morton Arboretum, they have this display. And if you've been there, the light show at Morton. I mean, it is quite spectacular. It's worth the experience. And one of the things they do is they light these trees, and they're beautiful colored lights, and a lighted pathway will take you into the forest. And then the trees begin to sing. It's like being in heaven for just a moment every really singing trees. Well, I see it says yeah, that's what they do. Because all creation is made to sing the glory of Almighty God. It's not about the tree. It's about the God who made it. Hey, friends, we've all got those boots on Borglum's moments when we want to carve something high and lifted up way up there that will reflect the glory of whatever it is we think needs reflectance, whether the picture is something that can inspire us something that can save us something worth worshiping. And at that moment, there are three little phrases that I want you to think of and maybe even repeat to yourself, it's not about you. You are not the most important person in the whole world. And it's not about me, I'm not the most important person in the whole world. Only God, only God, you are my God. I will worship no other. But you Almighty God, I believe those words, and then I struggle to live them.
Bert DeJong 24:35
and confess to you that there are still moments, even moments like in church and in worship and life together. When I submit it, I want it to be more about me than and only belong to you. Father, I pray for a heart in the life that sings with the Trees of creation, the glory of our God, part of a world that sings the glorious message of redemption, life in Jesus Christ forevermore, for all who repent and believe. I want to sing of God to the God who only is to be worshipped. So I pray that you will forgive the impulse to create an idol and that you will nurture in me a deep and lifelong passion for serving you and you alone.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai